Chapter 14
Miriam’s reaction to the lanterns in the gardens was one of scathing disinterest—‘Do people in this town truly pay to see these? They’re only lights’—which Esther really should have found aggravating.
But Esther could think of nothing except the pounding of her heart, the trembling of her hands at Miriam’s nearness—and Miriam’s voice saying, It would be beautiful, over and over in her mind.
Esther felt as if she were ripe fruit, about to burst its skin, a cloud about to rain, and she was so undone, so confused, so exhausted of feeling constantly on the edge of something without actually reaching it.
The hour grew late enough that they had to depart.
Esther didn’t know whether she felt disappointed or relieved.
They hailed another cab, both clambering inside.
Then they stared at each other from opposite seats in a heavy, significant silence.
Esther could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, thudding in a syncopated rhythm between each judder of the coach.
Miriam wore her typical small, self-satisfied smile as she watched her.
‘I can get you the grimoire,’ Esther said. ‘I needn’t kill Thomas for it. Tell me where it is, and I’ll find it.’
Miriam shook her head. ‘He keeps it with him always.’
‘I know you said he may be violent, but I am more powerful than him. If he can’t truly use magic, I don’t see how he could be a threat.’
‘Your fa— Christopher Harding,’ Miriam said, ‘was, for all his faults, a capable ritualist. There may be something in that grimoire that presents a genuine danger, regardless of your cousin’s abilities.
And he knows the truth of your powers, your curse.
Surely, he could ruin you, if he were so inclined? ’
‘He is a wealthy man, and I am a woman; he could always do that, regardless.’ Esther turned her head away, staring resolutely out the window.
‘I am capable of many things, Miss Richter, but I cannot kill willingly. I have lived my life this far with relative liberty because I am willing to play by society’s rules, as much as they chafe, and I expect you to do the same.
Otherwise, this brief acquaintance will be at an end. ’
‘He shall live, then, until you set this stubbornness aside,’ Miriam said. ‘But you must set it aside eventually, Esther. Your life depends on it.’
Esther looked back at her. Miriam’s eyes were so dark, her features so dramatic—a face unearthly enough that Esther felt she would never grow used to looking at it, even if they knew each other for the rest of their lives.
She cleared her throat. ‘If you continue to teach me magic, I will see what I can do about the grimoire.’
Miriam bared her teeth at her derisively. It felt shockingly crude. ‘You still believe you can break your curse?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be able to, eventually? It is all magic, ultimately.’
‘Such hope; it feels incongruous with your nature.’
‘All the hope I have goes towards the curse’s end,’ Esther replied, sharply. ‘I have no other optimism left to me.’
Miriam had been hunched over, leaning forwards; she pulled back, shoulders lowering minutely. ‘I have been harsh,’ she conceded, although there was little apology in her voice. ‘Of course you would wish to free yourself.’
Esther swallowed. ‘It—it is a burden. I do not know the exact details, only what my uncle and my cousin have spoken about when they thought I wasn’t listening, but…
only the firstborn of each generation is supposed to have magic, and when that firstborn is a woman—the Seed of Eve—that magic becomes corrupted.
I may have power, like yours, but I also bring misfortune to those around me.
Those who love me, and those whom I love. ’
‘What sort of misfortune?’
‘Death, usually. Grief, and injury. I can list to you now those who have died because of me—unhappy accidents too common to be accidental: my mother, when I was born; my nursemaids, as I grew; my uncle; my father; even Thomas’s wife, Lily.
They were only married a year, you know, before she died on the childbed.
She and their baby both. If I were him—’ Esther’s voice wavered, and she cleared her throat. ‘If I were him, I would hate me, too.’
The cab came to a standstill. They exited, and Esther paid the driver. Miriam walked her up to the front door.
‘Esther,’ Miriam said.
‘Yes?’
‘Regardless of this curse, you deserve to be loved,’ she told her. ‘Not hated. Not in the way you think.’
It was a sweet sentiment, but her tone made it sound like a warning, not consolation.
‘What sort of love?’ Esther asked.
‘Eternal,’ Miriam replied. ‘Eternal, and undying.’
Esther had a nightmare that night.
She was standing in a hallway she’d never seen before, picking a fraying tapestry apart with her bare hands. She pulled and pulled at the threads until her fingers were bleeding and raw, staining the fabric scarlet.
‘Esther,’ a voice said. ‘Esther, Esther.’ But when she turned around, she saw—herself, and yet not herself; this not-Esther had a necklace of bruised flesh around her neck, and she wore an old-fashioned gown covered in blood.
Then again, a voice came from behind her: ‘Esther.’ And when she turned around, she saw herself again, but this self was not injured. Her neck was clean, and her hair was cut shockingly short, up to her chin. She wore a curious slip of silver silk, covered in shimmering beads.
As Esther turned back and forth between her two selves, they began to multiply in endless lines—it was like standing between two mirrors, surrounded by infinite reflections.
‘Weave us back together,’ the short-haired Esther told her. ‘Those before, those after; you can weave us all together again.’
Esther turned back to the tapestry and scrambled to twist the threads back into place. But she didn’t know what she was doing; there seemed to be no way to undo the damage she had done. The fabric slipped between her bloody fingers, as intangible as spider silk.
‘Weave,’ commanded the bloody Esther.
‘Weave,’ commanded the other.
Esther felt a tear slip down her cheek. ‘I can’t,’ she told them.
‘Weave,’ short-haired Esther repeated. ‘You have to kill me to do so. Remake history, so I’ll never exist.’
And then Esther saw that she was offering her a knife.
She took a step back. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t, I—’
‘Do it,’ bloodied Esther told her. Esther spun around to look at her. ‘It is the only way.’
Short-haired Esther said, ‘Kill me, and our souls can be mended.’ Then she stretched her arm out further, to display the weapon. It was an oyster knife, snub-bladed and hooked. ‘Cut me like she did.’
Esther took a small, hesitant step forward.
Then someone screamed, and the scream was painful, white-hot and burning.
Esther shrieked, scrabbled at her own skin, writhed and gasped as the dream burst its seams—and she was in her room.
It was dark. Something was moving outside her window, cawing furiously, raking at the glass, filling the room with high-pitched squeals.
Esther groaned and rolled off the bed, stumbling toward the window. She saw the bird outside and realised, betrayed, that it was her Little Shadow. ‘Stop,’ she cried, as she opened the window. ‘Stop, please.’
The crow cawed and shuffled in place, seeming almost contrite. A cool breeze flowed across the room, Esther’s skin puckering with the chill.
‘You wanted to wake me,’ she said to the crow. It cocked its head at her.
Now that Esther thought about it, there was something newly familiar in her Little Shadow. Its eyes, featureless pools of black, seemed to betray a flash of human intelligence.
The crow hopped nervously from foot to foot. Esther reached out a hand—usually, it let her pet it—but this time, it turned and launched itself into the night sky. Esther opened her mouth to call out for it, but it was no use; the crow had disappeared.
Her eyes prickled with exhaustion. Esther closed the window, and then she went to pull the covers back on the bed.
She was surprised to find the tips of her fingers raw and oversensitive, dragging against the fabric with a painful rasp.
Hissing, she withdrew her hand to look at it.
There were specks of blood and dark filaments beneath her fingernails, as if she had been pulling a tapestry apart.
Esther spent most of the next day practising what Miriam had taught her, making her hand immaterial, over and over, putting it through tables and walls.
Then she did it with her entire body, becoming as insubstantial as air; she stood in the cavity between two rooms, feeling the shadows curl around her.
She usually didn’t like the dark, but it was almost comforting to be part of it, to disappear entirely.
No curse, no Thomas, no Miriam Richter. Just Esther and the shadows, twins in the black.
It was an unpleasant feeling, the faint pain of the shadows taking power from her; but the joy of the outcome seemed to allay the cost. Miriam had said, hadn’t she, that her soul was strong enough to sustain such magic?
Everything worth doing required sacrifice—Esther knew that intimately.
Her life had been full of the sacrifices she had made in the name of her curse: her relationship with her brother; her chances of marriage; her ability to live without regret or fear.
In the face of those things, this seemed so inconsequential.
She would feed herself to the shadows with a smile, knowing that this time, at least, she was guaranteed her reward.
At one point—her hand halfway into the wall—Isaac emerged from his own room into the same corridor. He had a top hat on that appeared a little large, halfway falling off his head, and a gold-topped cane that Esther suspected he had stolen from Thomas.
‘I’m off to my club,’ he said. ‘Daniel Hawthorne got his ear cut off in a duel, and he’s put it in a jar to be displayed. We’re doing a ceremony for it.’